


making constellations to point the way home

by Wallyallens



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, i make up my own post canon and spice with angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23806906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: post-canon: Three years after the war, Dutch is still a killjoy. She's drinking in The Royale after a mission when Johnny walks in.Prompted by @minachandler: dutchjohnny + drunk late night chat
Relationships: Dutch | Yalena Yardeen/Johnny Jaqobis
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	making constellations to point the way home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minachandler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minachandler/gifts).



Dutch blew into Westerly on an eastern wind and stepped out of her ship into a light rain. Holding out a hand into the drizzle, she let a few droplets fall onto her skin and shivered at the cold. With a glance up towards the pouring sky, she closed her palm and tugged up the hood of her coat, venturing into the rain.

Old Town was always the same: built from the ground-up after the war, the people rebuilt the factories and shops and the marketplace almost exactly, using whatever scrap metal they could find and working it with their own hands. Although they had been offered aid from Qresh with the help of Aneela and Kendry, the people of Westerly were nothing if not proud. They rolled up their sleeves, took count of what remained, and got to work. Old Town looked as cobbled-together as it had before, and somehow, that was strangely comforting to Dutch.

_At least one thing hadn’t changed_ . . .

She headed for The Royale, as was her habit after a mission. The bounty that she had dropped off at the RAC was a pirate who had been evading her for the past nine months. It had been three years since the war had ended, and yet there were still people looking to exploit those who had been turned into Hullen. Some believed that the knowledge of the Hullen hive mind still existed in the memories of the former-Hullen, so a black market trade in kidnapped ex-soldiers had sprung up in the last few years, as people searched for power through knowledge. The pirate that Dutch had just apprehended had been notorious for attacking the former-Hullen to this end.

She had left him to the RAC and Aneela to deal with. Dutch was sure that he would get what he deserved.

“Celebrating, are we?”

Pree handed her the drink that she had ordered as Dutch took up residence at the bar, taking his hand and squeezing it tightly in greeting. With gold eyeliner and pants that also functioned as a disco ball from the way that they shone in the light, Pree was as constant as Old Town, leaning against the bar opposite her.

“I brought in that black market guy, the one who’s been taking the former Hullen,” Dutch told him. “It’s been a long time coming.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Pree said.

Pouring himself a drink and her another, he clicked their glasses together in a toast. Dutch drank it down with a grin. The high after a job buzzing in her veins, she leaned back with a contented sigh. Music swelled throughout the room, from the slightly sticky floors to the ceiling, and it was busy for a Wednesday night. There were enough people for it to feel full without crossing the line into crowded. The kind of room that you could lose yourself in. Dutch’s favourite kind, these days.

“How’re you doing, kid?” Pree asked. “Heard from any of the old gang recently? You know I miss those cute boys in here.”

Dutch laughed gently. “D’av was on some galactic fishing trip with Jaq, last time we spoke. Aneela and Kendry are on Qresh, although I did speak to Aneela about prosecuting the guy today – I don’t think he’s getting off lightly. She’s always happy when she has someone to punish.”

“And John?”

“He’s on his farm,” Dutch replied, looking down at her glass. Liquid swirled around in the bottom, and she gulped it down before she went on. “Just me left now. Who’d have thought it? Guess that makes me the last killjoy standing.”

D’av had retired a year after the war, to spend more time with Jaq. They had tried to make it work for so long. As Killjoys, they had moved around after the war rounding up the last of the bad guys, coming back for visits as often as possible. Every time they returned, it was harder for D’av to leave. She could see it on his face every time that he said goodbye to Jaq.

In the end, Dutch had let him go. She thought that she loved him, and it hurt, but not as much as watching his heart break every time that they left. Now that he had a son, D’av had a new kind of duty; the most important kind. He had moved to Qresh and worked at the RAC, close enough to see his son often, and when she saw him share a laugh with Jaq, Dutch knew that they had made the right decision.

She just wished that doing the right thing hurt less, sometimes. Wryly smiling, she laughed without humour and thought about her new empty ship, and her, the famous bounty hunter, the last one of their little family left flying.

Pree put a hand over her own. “It’s okay to miss them, you know. You could go and see them – how long are you staying this time?”

“Same as ever. Until the next job.”

“Dutch-”

“I’m fine, Pree. Are you my mother or my bartender?” Dutch lifted her empty glass to be filled, and said to him. “I _do_ miss them. You know that. But I’ll be alright on my own, I always have been.”

He filled her glass, but soon Pree was called away to serve more patrons, and to get Gared to break up a bar fight, leaving Dutch alone with her drinks and her thoughts. It was something that she had gotten far too used to over the last two years. With her fingers going numb and the music sweeping her away as she tapped a toe to the beat, nodding her heavy head, she didn’t notice the warning look that Pree shot her a moment before somebody sunk onto the stool beside her.

“Whatever’s strong. Double,” Johnny said. His voice was already slurred, but Dutch would know it anywhere. Stiffening in her seat at the sound, she looked over to see Johnny sitting beside her, eyes glassy as he turned to her, nodding. “Dutch.”

“Johnny, I-” She hadn’t been expecting this. It took a lot to catch Dutch off guard, but seeing Johnny managed to as she fumbled for her words, the drunken world spinning around her. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

“I got tired of drinking at home alone,” he shrugged. Picking up a glass from Gared with a smile, he drained it in two sips. “What’s your excuse?”

“I just got back from a mission.”

“And were you planning on stopping by before the next one?”

Despite the noise in the room and the fog in her head, Dutch still caught the bite in his tone. While she had been panicking before, her reeling mind assembled itself away from _Johnny_ and to anger, which was an easier, more familiar emotion. It woke her up. With a short, sharp breath out of her nose, she turned to him with raised eyebrows.

“Something you want to say, Johnny?”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

It wasn’t a question. Johnny wasn’t asking why, or if it was true, it was just a flat accusation. He was pointedly looking away from her now, turned towards the bar as Dutch moved her body to face him entirely, making a noise of complaint. She wanted to be outraged, to say _no, you’re being ridiculous_ or _how dare you even say that?_ But . . . after a huff, Dutch fell silent and Johnny smirked darkly.

“I thought so,” he said, taking a sip.

“Hey, that’s not fair!” Dutch argued. Finding her voice, she waved a hand in his direction, snatching up her own drink because two could play at being a moody arsehole, thank you very much. “I’ve been busy. One of us has to keep things in order around here.”

“That’s an excuse and we both know it. You never could lie to me, remember.”

“It’s been a long time. Maybe I learned,” Dutch said coldly. “Things changed while you were gone, John. Did you really think that they wouldn’t?”

“I knew that things would change, Dutch. I just thought . . . I never thought that we would. That we were the exception.”

Dutch’s vision swirled in a way that had nothing to do with alcohol. Blinking hard, she forced her eyes to stay open until they cleared. _Three years._ Three years, and Johnny still knew exactly how to see right through her, past the hard edges and bullshit attitude and walls that had grown higher around her. He still knew how to cut close to the bone.

“I’ve been back for three months, Dutch. You’ve been to see me _once_.”

When Johnny had first returned, they had thrown a party for him at Aneela and Kendry’s house on Qresh. The whole gang was back together for the first time since the war. Johnny had spent an hour showing Jaq things from his travels, telling stories about solar storms and ice planets and the song of a space whale. He had been so bright, so full of things that she was no longer a part of.

Johnny had also been alone. Out there, he had found a pocketful of stars, but nobody to share them with.

Dutch swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat. “You left.”

“You said that you were okay with that! It was your idea for me to go in the first place, don’t forget.”

“For a year-” Dutch argued. She could feel the eyes on them now, as their argument grew louder. Sending a look over her shoulder that said _back off_ in capital letters to everyone else in the bar, she leaned closer to Johnny and said. “You never came back, Johnny. You were supposed to come home, and you – you were gone for three years.”

Johnny flinched beside her. Dutch hated to see him in pain, even when they were arguing. Without thinking, she reached over and grabbed his closest hand. There was a new scar across his thumb, but his hand still fit into hers perfectly, as Dutch tangled her fingers into his, feeling all of the anger sap out of her.

“I missed you, Johnny. I knew that I would, but – I had no idea how much it would hurt. Call me a selfish bitch, but I only said it was okay for you to go because I thought that you were coming back.”

“I didn’t mean to stay away for so long,” Johnny said quietly. He was looking at their entwined hands. Even after years, he still looked the same. A little older, a few silver hairs at his temples, a few new scars. A little more tired, maybe. But Johnny’s blue eyes still held the entire universe when he looked back up at her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t do it to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“It’s just . . . the universe is big, Dutch.”

“I know. That’s why you were gone for so long looking.”

“No, no, you don’t get it-” Johnny slurred. “The universe is big. I knew that. It’s filled with planets I’ve never been to and galaxies whose names I can’t pronounce and – an’ so many lights. Hundreds of thousands of planets, whole solar systems that we can’t reach, only see the light from. We don’t even know where they’re from.”

Despite herself, Dutch laughed a little at that. “I’m sure you of all people could find out.”

“You don’t understand, Dutch,” Johnny said. “The universe is big, and with all of those distant stars, all of that space . . . we’re tiny. Compared to the universe, us, right here and now, we’re – we’re small. I always knew it, but I – I never _felt_ it until I missed you.”

Dutch felt all of the air leave her lungs.

Drunken honesty didn’t leave a lot of room for them to hide in. It was too raw, uninhibited by rationality and the fear of being vulnerable. There was nothing but openness on Johnny’s face as he said it, with such clarity that Dutch believed that he meant it, sincerely.

“I don’t understand . . . I thought that you’d stayed away because you found something out there.”

Johnny shook his head, “Mostly I jus’ found out that everywhere is the same, in the end. You see one supernova, you’ve seen them all. It’s not the place that matters. It’s who you’re with.”

A blush crept up Johnny’s neck, as he glanced over at her. There were tears in his eyes, and he turned away to swipe a hand over them.

“Sorry,” he said. “We don’t talk about our big girl feelings.”

“We do tonight,” Dutch said. Taking his hand again, she leaned closer and pressed. “Why didn’t you come back? If you didn’t find what you were looking for, why did you stay away for so long?”

“Doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to me. Why didn’t you come back, Johnny? Why didn’t you come home?”

He looked at her sideways, dark eyes filled with an emotion that she recognised from years ago.

“You know why.”

She had been so angry at him for staying away. A part of her knew that it was irrational, that she was being resentful because she was alone now and Johnny had found something better out there, and it wasn’t fair to wish that he was back if he didn’t want to be. Another part would have given anything for him to be this close again.

Dutch prided herself on being a woman of many words. She was armed with both a gun and a quip, never missing a beat in a fight for something to say. She had given speeches to change the tide of a war. She had spoken up for what she believed in. A story had saved her life.

This was something that she didn’t know how to talk about.

“Johnny, if this is about what the lady did-”

“We both know it’s not just that. Even before, I-” He took a breath. “It might not have been real, our life here, the memories that the lady planted in our heads . . . but the feelings were. At least they were for me.”

Johnny broke off. He didn’t seem able to look at her, focusing on his glass again, fingers drumming against the rim.

“It was never you that was wrong,” Dutch said. Amid the noise of the bar, her voice was so small that they could almost pretend that she hadn’t said it at all, set free by the alcohol running through her veins. But the words were out there now. There was nothing that she could do but follow through with them as John leaned forward.

“Wha’ was that?”

“Our life here, the one that the lady put in our heads. _It_ was wrong. Being the . . . housewife, not being a killjoy, that felt wrong to me. But-” Dutch spoke quickly, in the hopes that speed would make it less painful to admit, “- it was never you that felt wrong. I remember waking up in a bed – _our_ bed – upstairs.” They both looked towards the ceiling. “I felt loved. More than that, I felt _safe_ , and that’s not something I’ve felt a lot of.”

“Oh,” Johnny breathed. “You never said-”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

There was silence for a beat. The weight of their shared memories; fake memories, as insubstantial as smoke blowing through their open fingers, pressed down on them. Dutch and Johnny took a drink as one.

“Shit,” Johnny said. “We never used to be this much of a mess, did we?”

Dutch tilted her head to one side, “well . . .”

He started to laugh at her expression, and soon she joined in too. It was weaker than it used to be, but the warmth remained, as they slouched over the bar laughing like old times.

“Okay, okay, maybe we _were_ always this much of a mess,” John admitted with a chuckle.

“Yeah,” Dutch agreed. “But we had our moments, didn’t we?”

John looked steadily back at her. “Yeah,” he breathed. “We did.”

Making the mistake of holding his gaze for a second too long, Dutch cleared her throat when she finally managed to look away. Carefully emptying her drink, she leaned over the bar and took the bottle, topping up Johnny’s glass before her own. It gave her mind and her hands something to do other than think about Johnny’s hand on her own.

Dutch took a sip and said sarcastically. “Who’d have thought the war would be so much easier than now. Things were simpler back then. We lived like we were dying.”

“Was it living?” John cut her off. His expression turned wistful, and he flexed his fingers against the bar. “That’s why I stayed away. I thought I’d find something out there, pretend I was fine for long enough to find some . . . stupid answer to it all. That one day I’d find the thing that makes _everythin’_ make sense.”

“Just the easy stuff, then?” Dutch teased, bumping her arm into his with a smile. “Very lazy of you, Jaqobis. You should have been finding a way to time travel and curing all diseases, too.”

“ _Ass_ ,” Johnny hacked a laugh. Then his smile dipped, as he spoke. “It doesn’t exist, though. The answer. There isn’t one.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Disappointed. I hoped . . .” Johnny shook his head a little, sadly. “If there was an answer, I could make it better, and it would be easy. But there wasn’t. There was jus’ . . . space. When I thought about coming back, I – I didn’t want you to feel pressured about it. They’re my stupid emotions an’ I needed to deal with them, I didn’t want to ruin what you had here.”

“You’d never do that, Johnny.”

“Not on purpose, but – it hurt too much. To see you,” he said. Johnny looked up, bright pain in his eyes. “I didn’t find anything out there that I didn’t already have here. And coming back meant being close to you, and D’av-”

“D’av left. Two years ago.”

“I know, he told me. What happened?”

“There was someone who needed him more than I did,” Dutch said. When Johnny’s brows furrowed in confusion, she added. “ _Jaq_. Our life, moving around all the time . . . it killed him, to leave. I couldn’t ask him to do that anymore. He needed to be here, and I – I don’t do _families_.”

Johnny scoffed at her words, as Dutch made a face. “Bullshit! Then what were we?”

“We were different, Johnny. It’s like you said. We’re the exception.”

“You’re telling me that you don’t love them? Jaq, Aneela-” he hesistated, then added, “- D’av?”

“Of course I do. I’d give my life for them, but . . . I’ve never really had a family before. Not the kind they’re building on Qresh. The . . . big house, dinners on Sundays, board games kind. The way I was raised by Khlyen was so foreign to anything even close to _normal_.”

“So?”

“So . . . I don’t have anything to base being a part of a family on. I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“You think anyone does?” Johnny threw his head back, laughing. “Shit, Dutchie – look at the way that me and D’av were raised. Look at Aneela! Nobody knows how to be a family, it’s not genetically coded into our DNA or memories, you just – you jus’ try. That’s all. You think you don’t know how to be a family? You’re already doing it, you have been for years. We’re all your family.”

For the second time that night, Dutch was left shaken by the feeling of the world turning suddenly, throwing her off balance.

“It’s not just that,” she said, although the fight was gone from her voice. “Who I am is what I do. Being out there, helping people . . . John, I _love_ it. I love being a killjoy. Doing it was the first time I ever really liked who I was. D’av couldn’t keep doing it and be the father that he wanted to be, but I couldn’t leave it behind, either. We were never gonna work.”

“You made a choice,” John said.

She nodded. “I chose me. This life, _my_ life that I love. That sounds awful, doesn’t it?”

“No,” John shook his head. “You’re still more your own person than anyone else that I know. If this is what you need, then this is what we do.”

Dutch looked up at him sharply. “We?”

“That is, if you’ll have me,” he said bashfully.

“But . . . your farm, your goats-”

“Eh, I tried it. Farming might not be my forte,” Johnny admitted, making a face. “Too much dirt, not enough asteroids. I’ve spent three months on that farm, and you know what I spend most of my time doing? Looking at the stars.”

“You really want to come back?” Dutch asked. Leaning forward, she put a hand on his arm, squinting to see if he looked sober enough to be making this decision. “Johnny, think about this. You don’t have to.”

“I tried running away, but you want to know what my mistake was?” Johnny replied. Dutch nodded, noticing as she did that his hand was covering hers on his arm, but not moving away. “We were supposed to run away together. We promised, right?”

Dutch felt the edge of her lip tug up. “We don’t have to stay here.”

“We don’t have to stay here,” Johnny echoed, matching her heartbeat for heartbeat. “So what do you say – partners?”

Replying by throwing her arms around his neck, Dutch hugged Johnny tightly, feeling him freeze in surprise underneath her hands. After a shocked moment, his arms tightened around her back. Burying her head into his neck, smelling the lingering soap and aftershave, Dutch murmured so only he could hear.

“I’ve really fucking missed you. I love you, Johnny.”

“Love you too,” Johnny whispered back.

It didn’t matter how, not yet. It just mattered.

Letting go of Dutch, Johnny leaned back with a grin. “Drunk walk home? Lucy’s at the docks.”

_Home_.

Dutch smiled.

She already was home.


End file.
